Shahrukh was not detained, only delayed – US official

Forced on the defensive over the detaining of Bollywood star Shahrukh Khan at a US airport twice, Washington has asserted it was not a case of racial profiling or a pattern, according to Gulf News.

Suggesting that Khan was not “detained”, but “simply delayed,” State Department spokesperson Mark Toner told reporters on Friday: “I wouldn’t necessarily look at this as some sort of pattern but rather two separate incidents.”

“Obviously, we’ve expressed our regret about the incident and recognise that he’s a very renowned artist and humanitarian,” Toner said.

Toner also sought to paint the detaining of Khan at New York’s White Plains airport on Thursday when he arrived to receive the prestigious Chubb fellow award at Yale University as a “delay”, saying “he was temporarily delayed before admission” to the US.

However, he dismissed the suggestion that it was racial profiling. “I mean, I think we all know that that’s clearly not the case. The fact of the matter is tens of thousands of Muslims travel to and from the United States every day and are not detained or delayed.”